Ode to my Glastonbury

I am gutted, I was unable to get Glastonbury tickets so that means that I wont be going until at least 2007 (next year is a fallow year). I was especially looking forward to going this year as we should be living in Devon this summer and it wouldn't involve an arduous six hour train journey.

Many people who haven't been don't understand the attraction and I should assume that perhaps 80% of these never would anyway because they're idiots who work in offices. However for the uninitiated, music lover, culture lover, spiritually inclined or just interested individuals to whom it should appeal here (in no particular order) is why I love the Glastonbury festival:

• Incredible sense of belonging and community
• Great music (and this is not just the main stages, my favourite things have often been on the Jazz world stage or Acoustic tent)
• Great music (its so good I've listed it twice)
• Hippies (most people hate hippies because they're jealous of them. I couldn't be that nice and chilled out all the time but I do admire them)
• Free stuff - massages, drinks, food, bongo lessons whatever you can blag really
• The mashed up people raving all night at the blanket stall
• Red bush tea - I discovered it there
• Chai
• Food that isn't just burgers and hog roasts as you get at other festivals
• The atmosphere, especially at night when the whole site is lit by flares and camp fires
• The Somerset countryside, especially sunset over Glastonbury Tor
• Comedy, circus, theatre tents to hide in when it gets too hot or too wet
• Weird stuff popping up all over the place
• My friends being together
• Smoking dope as if it's legal
• Ozomatli - they're a yearly fixture
• Cafes, especially the Gypsi candle lit one, the weird christians who have a solid wood house and introduced me to omelette baps, the Avalon cafe especially because I saw John Peel there and the Gujurati Chai cafe
• The smug feeling of a shared secret experience when you travel back through Reading to London and scare the businessmen
• the apres-bath

I couldn't possibly convey in words alone how much I love Glastonbury and it is a shame that it is being taken over by wankers, especially last year when the Oasis crowd got their simian hands on it making me not want to go. I am worried about the next time being in 2007, who knows what might have changed by then, one of my best friends is getting married and perhaps will have a child, others who are currently single might have a crap girlfriend in tow, I might be so poor as a student that I can't afford it and many other changes may have occured.

I am going away I hope so I wont tearfully stare at the tv as I have done in other years I didn't go.